After Reagan’s Election In 1980, Kagan Wanted A “More Leftist Left”
This piece, authored by Elena Kagan ’81 during her tenure at The Daily Princetonian, was published on Nov. 10, 1980.
Where I grew up — on Manhattan’s Upper West Side — nobody ever admitted to voting Republican. The real contests for Congress and the state legislatures occurred in early September, when the Democratic primary was held. And the people who won those races and who then took the November elections with some 80 per cent of the vote were real Democrats — not the closet Republicans that one sees so often these days but men and women committed to liberal principles and motivated by the ideal of an affirmative and compassionate government.
Perhaps because of this background, I absorbed such liberal principles early; more to the point, I have retained them fairly intact to this day. And that was why at 12:45 Wednesday morning, when I listened to Liz Holtzman hoarsely proclaim that “the only thing I intended to lose in this campaign is my voice,” I wanted desperately to believe her. And that was why, at 5:00 that same morning, when I finally realized that her faith just wasn’t going to be confirmed, I sat down and cried.
I admit it
I know that sounds sentimental and rather melodramatic to boot. So let me explain that I was not what one might call a detached observer. I worked for Liz Holtzman last summer — some 14 hours a day, six days a week. So that night I was at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, attending what I was fairly certain was going to be a celebration. Instead, it was a wake. And let me tell you there is nothing more depressing than drinking vodka and tonics and watching Walter Cronkite with 500 other people whose expectations had differed similarly from reality.
I got kind of drunk that night. A lot of people did. Most of us had grown to admire, even to love, Liz or rather, not Liz herself — actually, she was not terribly personable — but her intelligence, her integrity, her ideals. The defeat of those qualities by an ultra-conservative machine politician just come from the town of Hempstead was not a pleasant thing to watch.
Who, who, who and who?
And then, of course, less felt but equally significant were the other races. Reagan I expected, but Symms, Abdnor, Quayle and Grassley I did not. Even after the returns came in, I found it hard to conceive of the victories of these anonymous but Moral Majority-backed opponents of Senators Church, McGovern, Bayh and Culver, these avengers of “innocent life” and the B-1 Bomber, these beneficiaries of a general turn to the right and a profound disorganization on the left.
But as the grim tidings kept pouring in, those of us at the Brooklyn Academy were surprisingly unconcerned. Nobody quite believed at that point that the Senate would actually go Republican and, anyway, what did all the rest of it matter? Liz was going to win.
Even as the raw figures started coming in, showing dear old Alfonse in the lead, confidence was unflagging. After all, CBS insisted that their exit polls showed Liz the winner. And after all, this was New York — not South Dakota or Idaho or Indiana, but reliable, liberal New York.
It was around 11:00 that people started quoting Chicken Little. CBS revised its prediction, and the band resorted to holding up signs reading “Clap your hands” and “Sing along” in an attempt to rouse people from their lethargy. The attempt didn’t work; it’s hard to sing “For Me and My Gal” when there just ain’t no bells ringing anywhere in hearing distance.
Looking back on last Tuesday, I can see that our gut response — our emotion-packed conclusion that the world had gone mad, that liberalism was dead and that there was no longer any place for the ideals we held or the beliefs we espoused — was a false one. In my more rational moments, I can now argue that the next few years will be marked by American disillusionment with conservative programs and solutions, and that a new, revitalized, perhaps more leftist left will once again come to the fore. I can say in these moments that one election year does not the death of liberalism make and that 1980 might even help the liberal camp by forcing it to come to grips with the need for organization and unity. But somehow, one week after the election, these comforting thoughts do not last long. Self-pity still sneaks up, and I wonder how all this could possibly have happened and where on earth I’ll be able to get a job next year.
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Former Attorney General Ed Meese on Supreme Court Nominee Elena Kagan
According to multiple sources, at 10 am today President Barack Obama will announce his decision to name Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. Kagan, who served as the Dean of Harvard Law School from 2003 to 2009, would be the first justice without judicial experience in almost 40 years. But this does not mean she is in any way a stranger to the Senate confirmation process. In fact, in 1995 she authored an article on judicial confirmations for the University of Chicago Law Review where she wrote:
The Bork hearings presented to the public a serious discussion of the meaning of the Constitution, the role of the Court, and the views of the nominee; that discussion at once educated the public and allowed it to determine whether the nominee would move the Court in the proper direction. Subsequent hearings have presented to the public a vapid and hollow charade, in which repetition of platitudes has replaced discussion of viewpoints and personal anecdotes have supplanted legal analysis. Such hearings serve little educative function, except perhaps to reinforce lessons of cynicism that citizens often glean from government. ... [T]he fundamental lesson of the Bork hearings [is] the essential rightness—the legitimacy and the desirability—of exploring a Supreme Court nominee’s set of constitutional views and commitments.
On this point, we find agreement with Ms. Kagan. As we documented first with the Justice Sonia Sotomayor confirmation hearings, and again with the University of California at Berkeley law school Associate Dean Goodwin Liu hearings, President Obama's leftist legal nominees have been completely unwilling and unable to defend their liberal legal views from Senate questioning. Instead they have retreated or renounced their past writings in an all too familiar spectacle that Kagan has said: "takes on an air of vacuity and farce." We sincerely hope that Kagan continues to reject this model and that the U.S. Senate fulfills its proper advice and consent role. Responding to the news of Kagan's nomination, Former Attorney General Ed Meese released the following statement:
First and foremost, any nominee to a lifetime appointment to the United States Supreme Court must demonstrate a thorough fidelity to apply the Constitution as it was written, rather than as they would like to re-write it. Given Solicitor General Kagan’s complete lack of judicial experience, and, for that matter, very limited litigation experience, Senators must not be rushed in their deliberative process. Because they have no prior judicial opinions to look to, Senators must conduct a more searching inquiry to determine if Kagan will decide cases based upon what is required by the Constitution as it is actually written, or whether she will rule based upon her own policy preferences.
Though Ms. Kagan has not written extensively on the role of a judge, the little she has written is troubling. In a law review article, she expressed agreement with the idea that the Court primarily exists to look out for the "despised and disadvantaged." The problem with this view—which sounds remarkably similar to President Obama’s frequent appeals to judges ruling on grounds other than law--is that it allows judges to favor whichever particular client they view as "despised and disadvantaged." The judiciary is not to favor any one particular group, but to secure justice equally for all through impartial application of the Constitution and laws. Senators should vigorously question Ms. Kagan about such statements to determine whether she is truly committed to the rule of law. Nothing less should be expected from anyone appointed to a life-tenured position as one of the final arbiters of justice in our country.
The American people agree. According to a national post-election 2008 survey of 800 actual voters, the polling company, inc. found that 70% of respondents preferred that judges not base their decisions on personal views and feelings. And according to the latest Quinnipiac University Poll by a 16 point margin more Americans believe the Supreme Court should only consider the original intentions of the authors of the Constitution instead of considering changing times and current realities. And finally, the latest Gallup poll shows that more Americans "would prefer a new Supreme Court justice who makes the court more conservative (42%) over one who would make the Court more liberal (27%)." Let's hope the Senate gives the American people what they want.
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Here are some despised people: Congress votes to protect pedophiles against 'hate speech’
And check out the connection bewteen THIS convicted child molester and the banning of military recruiters from campus--he INVENTED it: Child molester back at work at Hawaii Legislature
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